World's Tiniest Wires Use Diamonds To Assemble Themselves Like LEGOs

Eric Mack
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Researchers have found a way to weave the tiniest of diamonds into the fabric of our lives, literally. The idea isn't bringing the bling, but actually using the tiny bits of diamond, called diamondoids to make wires that measure just three atoms wide.

Scientists from Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory say the miniscule conductive wires essentially assemble themselves, LEGO-style, and have the potential to be used in superconducting materials, fabrics that generate electricity or optoelectronics that use both light and electricity.

Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

"The process is a simple, one-pot synthesis. You dump the ingredients together and you can get results in half an hour. It's almost as if the diamondoids know where they want to go," said Hao Yan, a Stanford postdoctoral researcher and lead author of a paper on the work published Monday in Nature Materials.

The animation below shows how the wire self-assembles itself. The researchers started with diamondoids, which they describe as single cages that contain just 10 carbon atoms, that have a single sulfur atom attached to each. While floating in a solution, the sulfur atoms bond to a single copper ion and are then attracted to the top of the growing nanowire thanks to van der Waals forces.

Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

"Much like LEGO blocks, they only fit together in certain ways that are determined by their size and shape," said Stanford graduate student Fei Hua Li. "The copper and sulfur atoms of each building block wound up in the middle, forming the conductive core of the wire, and the bulkier diamondoids wound up on the outside, forming the insulating shell."

Diamondoids have already been used to make nanowires derived from other elements that grew large enough to see without the aid of a microscope.

"You can imagine weaving those into fabrics to generate energy," Melosh said. "This method gives us a versatile toolkit where we can tinker with a number of ingredients and experimental conditions to create new materials with finely tuned electronic properties and interesting physics."

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